Rome — The remains of a property of the Roman Emperor Caligulawith a portico and pipes, have appeared on the floor of the Piazza Pia in Rome, near the Vatican Cityduring work on an underpass for the Jubilee in 2025.
Among the discovery, announced Thursday by the Italian Ministry of Culture, is the foundation of what was two millennia ago a columned portico leading to a garden in a building built between the times of Augustus and Nero and once owned by Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, alias “Caligula”.
The inscription of the name of this famous emperor who ruled Rome between 37 and 41 AD on a lead water pipe was the clue that led researchers to find, at least, “the person responsible for the first renovation of the complex.”.
But the ownership of the premises has also been attributed thanks to a passage from ‘The Embassy of Caius’, by the writer Philo of Alexandriawhich tells how Caligula had received a representation of the Jews of Alexandria in the Gardens of Agrippina, an enclosure next to the Tiber River (like these remains).
In this room the emperor was presented with “the difficulties and the crisis that had affected the Jewish community of Alexandria in its relations with the Greek-Alexandrian population, a conflict that had manifested itself with violence, quarrels and episodes of religious intolerance.”
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The similarity between the remains found and the historian’s description allowed researchers to identify the location of this meeting in the excavations of Plaza Píaa few meters from the Vatican City and where a 2nd century Roman laundry was also found last month.
This discovery has “a considerable historical importance“because it places the excavation within the area of the Gardens of Agrippina the Elder, mother of Caligula, so “it is likely that this luxurious residence was inherited first by Germanicus, the emperor’s father, then by his wife and then by Caligula himself.”
Also in this enclave were found in the last century “lead pipes bearing the name of Julia Augusta, presumably Livia Drusilla, second wife of Augustus and grandmother of Germanicus”.
The excavation also revealed an important series of bell slabs (figurative terracottas used for roof decoration) with mythological scenes, reused as covers for sewers but “probably originally made to cover some garden structure,” according to the archaeologists.